From:   TOPHAM::PD           "Powder Diffraction Course" 23-JAN-2003 22:20:53.56
To:     SMTP%"barnabe@chimie.ups-tlse.fr"
CC:     PD
Subj:   RE: Information

Dear Antoine,

Sorry for the slow reply.

In answer to:

>Dear Dr J. K. Cockcroft,
Firstly, please feel free to use my first name (as all the students do here)

>Before sending the Assigment No3, can I have informations about the 2 last
>ones. Was the Assigment No2 sent in a good format ? Can I do the same in
>the future ? How many marks I already have ?

As you will see from my earlier message this evening, the results for
Assignment No.1 are now out. I hope to have the results for No.2 out
shortly. (It takes a while for two reasons: (a) there is a college
requirement that coursework is marked by two people, i.e. not just by
me - this is so that marks are not biased towards for or against any
student; (b) some students are not as prompt as they should be with
submitting coursework.)

>I also want to have information about the final project: is this project
>fixed by advisors or can we choose together the nature of the project ?
>Which person can I contact to speak about that ?

The project work is fixed and is designed to test your understanding of
some of the finer points of crystal structure refinement by the Rietveld
method from powder diffraction data.

You may ask why is this when many students might like to do project work
that is directly related to their own research. There are several reasons:

Firstly, project work is notoriously difficult to assess. By having a
common project, we remove much of the subjective aspect of assessment.
Consequently, the outcome gives a fairer mark of a student's achievements,
especially given that it can affect whether a merit or distinction is awarded.

Secondly, we wish to test certain learning objectives of the course and we
wish the students to appreciate certain points concerning Rietveld refinement.
Some data provide good learning points, others do not.

Finally, there is scope for the student to show individuality in the way the
project is written up and in the conclusions that they can draw from the data.

I hope that this answers your questions. We don't release details of the
project early because much of the course material relating to the project
is covered in "Term 2" of the course.

On a different subject, according to the departmental administrator
(Ms Maureen Austin) you have not completely enrolled or paid?
I was surprised to hear this from her since I thought you had been keen
to pay by credit card if I remember even before you had received any formal
enrolment papers from the college. Please can any outstanding issues be
sorted out as soon as possible.

With best wishes,

Jeremy Karl.

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